Elizabeth Johnstone, Seated Newhaven Fishwife

Description

The early history of photography in Edinburgh is distinguished by the remarkable partnership between the painter David Octavius Hill and the engineer Robert Adamson, who brought Talbot’s calotype, or paper negative, process to an artistic summit. The quiet dignity of this portrait of Elizabeth Johnstone, from Hill and Adamson’s documentary series on the Scottish fishing village of Newhaven, is due in part to certain characteristics of the calotype process. The grainy paper negative eliminated excessive detail and shaped a monumental figure out of broad areas of light and shadow. Showing the strain of the long exposure, the sitter supports herself against the stack of picturesque baskets, her eyes downcast. Her sculptural serenity is enlivened by the conflicting stripes of the skirts and aprons of her regional costume, an effect repeated in the sparkling pattern of the rough woven baskets.

Provenance

William and Deborah Struve, East Haddam, CT; purchased September 1974.

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Not On View

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Migrant Family, Texas

Description

Dorothea Lange had a deep-seated belief in photography as a tool for social change. She was hired in the mid-1930s by the Farm Security Administration (FSA) to document the plight of the poor and dispossessed during the Depression. Her empathetic response to her subjects set her work apart from many of her contemporaries. This image depicts a migrant family from Texas trying to escape the drought-stricken Dust Bowl. Telling details are captured in Lange’s characteristically sensitive style, including the shotgun shell held by the solemn child, the mother’s weary stance and bandaged legs, and the father’s hunched form as he crawls under the broken-down truck to repair it.

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At the Vermont State Fair, Rutland

Description

printed later by Light Gallery

Inscription

Verso, stamped in black ink, l.l.: This will authenticate that this print is one of a limited edition of 250 Dye Transfer prints made by LIGHT Gallery, of 724 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10019, from the original Farm Security Administration transparencies held by the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. / [Signed in pencil by Tennyson Schad]
Verso, in black ink and pencil, l.l.: Jack Delano / At the Vermont State Fair, Rutland / Sept. 1941 / Light Gallery Reg. No.: 54.41

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First Work in America

Description

Original photograph

Inscription

On verso in pencil: "First work in America - Italian immigrant carries garments to tenement home for the family to sew - 1910 N. Y. East Side", on verso typed: Lewis W. Hine Memorial Collection, Photo League.

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Au Siège de Sebastopol (Rue de la Monnaie from the Rue de Rivoli)

Description

exhibited as 1865-66 in the Portraits and Architecture in 1985

Charles Marville is known for his photographs of Paris. He was named “photographer of the city of Paris” in 1862, and recorded the city both before and after Baron Haussmann’s massive urban renewal projects of the 1860s. The visual drama that characterizes Marville’s depiction of the rue de la Monnaie is typical of his photographs of old Paris. The converging lines of architecture, sky, and road highlight the tight narrowness of the street, an aspect of old Paris that would soon be swept away by Haussmann’s wide boulevards. Signs and figures animate the surface of the corner building, contrasting with the empty street and the stillness of the delivery wagons waiting there.

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Three Pipers (Trois Pifferari)

Description

Charles Nègre belonged to the first generation of artist-photographers in France. His training as an artist informed all of the works in his large and varied oeuvre, perhaps especially his studies of the street people of Paris and their occupations, long a favorite subject of printmakers. His genre scenes, which were posed because of the protracted exposures, are pioneering examples of street photography, depicting familiar types such as ragpickers, chimney sweeps, and stonemasons. Exotic Italian pipers, shown here at rest in a palpitating light, had a strong presence in the artistic and musical imagination of the day. Nègre’s salted paper print lends a soft, pictorial effect to the details of their instruments, costume, and physiognomy.